It was perhaps the surest sign that Japan remains unnerved by last year’s devastating earthquake and tsunami. After a large quake on Friday hit near the same area stricken last year, broadcasters on the public television network NHK threw aside their usual reserve to repeatedly issue worried warnings about tsunamis, with one host frantically urging people to “flee now to save your life!”

[...] The 7.3-magnitude quake that struck at 5:29 p.m. under the seabed off the northeast shore of Honshu, the country’s largest island, was the largest aftershock since immediately after last year’s quake, according to the National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado.

[...] On Thursday, a radiological cleanup worker helping to remove contaminated soil from Naraha, a town in Fukushima Prefecture that remains partially evacuated because of radiation fears, appeared not to be worried about storing bags of that dirt along the coastline.

The worker, who declined to give his name, brushed off questions over whether those bags might be torn in another tsunami. “There isn’t going to be another tsunami,” he said.

Sounds apathetic. He doesn't care if there is another tsunami or where the bags of contaminated soil might end up one day….maybe that's the point you get to when you toil day in day out with material that is probably killing you….nothing really matters…

He is more likely to be contracted to work by a sub or sub sub contractor.

Much of the dirtiest work (the "grunt" work) pre 311 and post 311 is done by the lowest tier of the labor force.

With the lowest compensation, protection, and perhaps job training. I would think this would also include lack of information about safety precautions.

I think it is also a matter of record that many of these workers (especially early on) were recruited by the Japanese mobsters … "either do this work and die a slow death or don't and we will kill you now."

And although I am not going to link a bunch of provative references I will speculate that this worker might have been a teenager …

Thinking in the middle of the night about all of the water vapor constantly issuing from the wrecked buildings. There may be a way to capture it with chilled metal baffles and then remove it as ice to another locate for processing. Liquid nitrogen to chill. let the ice build and then water to warm the plates to get the ice to slide off, then, back to the chilling. I am haunted by the sight of the radioactive vapor escaping everywhere. So, I think: can't it be solidified for greater safety? Please excuse my short rant.

I don't want to think of these things, but the reality of the situation forces otherwise. Had been following the financial debacle since '08, often late night, found enenews. Must have the information, even though my current state does not allow me to change much out there.
I garden and forage in nature adding to the daily dish.

Hi richard, if we are discussing invading other's countries to respond to an ongoing possible ELE, I'd vote for invading the US to force them to finally sign the Kyoto protocol (and ACT!) and stop pushing the world over the climate change cliff, and then go north and invade Canada who withdrew from the K.P. last year to poison the world with tar sands.

We're already invaded!!! by profit-snatchers,
media mind-parasites and conspiracy-hatchers,
Tasmanian spin-flackers and lootbag-catchers,
protest head-bashers and atom-smashers,
enviromental debaclers and truth-redacters,
genome-crackers and elected slackers,
what we need's a persuasion invasion
that reveals false economic equations
and criminalises factual evasions
and all of Nuclear's Life degradations.

Exactly, or-well. People keep using the fallacy of equating a country's government with its citizenry. The same trap is present in thinking of a government as a monolith. Within any government body, there are probably voices for and against positions on any particular issue.

I live in Canada and I am appalled at the actions of "my" government over the last few years, including its position on Kyoto. Some one or some few within the government are making those decisions though, and the entire country is hostage to them. Same for any nation-state.

Notice how (in this post at least) I've come around to your way of thinking – to caricature it "a few bad guys are to blame". Tomorrow I'll change my mind and decide again that we are all culpable – it's hard-wired human nature.

Anyway, I'm always convinced that blaming "nation-state-name" for anything is futile, and invading "nation-state-name" for any reason is a game that serves somebody's ends but never mine.

Hi aigeezer, I think we agree on more than either of us probably realise, due to the constraints of this format and how I present here. Disagreement stimulates thinking, if one is open to that.
(You may have noticed my rhymes present the occassional deviation from a consistent viewpoint. I blame or-well.)
I agree that Gov't is but individuals. To forget that and identify with mythological notions and emotive constructs of "The State" is problematic.
However, we can't discount the hold those notions may have on "a people", nor "cultural reactions" such notions and constructs prompt in times of crisis, be that genuine crisis or contrived.
You see, in a way, I am saying what you have said before, that it is all of us.
Having said that, it does seem folks in Japan-and elsewhere – are facing a construct, in the shape of the Nuke power industry/nuke village/nuclear squid that, for the most part, operates with a rather monolithic face, a consistency of word and deed. The individuals within that arena choose to enter it, and retain free will and choice, and make decisions. To what extent are those choices and decisions informed by full realisation of all pertinent factuality?
How much of what they say/do is simply the momentum of their life path and what they have or have not been exposed to, or chosen to access from among those choices?
IOW, how many are the blind trying to lead the blind, and how many are conniving?
Looks like I'm out of space.

Anyway, try as I might, using any of those candidates as "the answer" seems a bit foolish, and many seem to be neither right nor wrong. Since the answer is almost certainly some combinatorial variation of those kinds of entities, it is all the more tantalizing that the answer is never at all clear (to me).

A friend used to do research in how people perceived counterfactuals, as in "if only I hadn't left the house five minutes late, I wouldn't have been involved in that fatal car crash" vs. "if only I had never been born etc."

Fascinating counterfactual: "If only blah blah, then we wouldn't have the nuke mess we face today."

… and of course the much better question: "Given the nuke mess we face today, how (exactly) will we get out of it?"

aigeezer, right, where to now, which is why I didn't bother continuing my thought train, as it led there.
I suggest we lack adequate mechanisms for restraining pro-nuclearists and pro-nuclearism.
How to globally leash the beast, if not put it down, keep it down AND deal with its' mess?
Globally, because, as we've seen, one disaster anywhere has far-reaching consequences in space and time.
I think it will take much more than is presently happening, more than economics, more than renewable development.
I suspect it will take a kind of societal change that I just don't see happening on a large enough scale.
I'm not at all sure we'll have time to find all the answers, before some exogenous shock(s) makes it all more difficult.

BTW, I accept your caricaturisation of my position because it's that – a caricature. I hope you suspect my position is a little more comprehensive and nuanced than my fictional creations of or-well, Fingers and others represent, but if not, that's OK. I'm just pixels.

Terminally-indented pixels for us both now. Yours have nuance written all over them. I know you know I know that.

Anyway, I see no particular progress on the "what to do" issue at any group level, so I make my own plans and live my own life factoring in nuke-world as best I can. Maybe once large numbers of people do something similar (i.e. notice the phenomenon and make some adjustment or other to lifestyle), then – maybe – that becomes group action, even if the "group" members are not really aware of each others' existence.

I'm thinking of something like the sometimes-alleged increasing emigration from Japan. It just happens, as though organically, without leaders, organizations, budgets, propaganda, and so forth.

Re fighting with sticks… good idea, but I'd suggest an extension – take a lesson from the "lower" animals. In the animal kingdom, among species that have evolved strong attack mechanisms, combat has often evolved into some form of ritual so the animals don't actually need to kill each other to prove a point.

Nixon (of all people) allowed a ritual combat display in which China trounced the American table tennis team. He got what he wanted and the Chinese got what they wanted. Nobody died.

So, with that model in mind, wouldn't it be great to see heads of state engage in things like arm-wrestling, or spelling bees, or projectile vomiting contests instead of routinely sending their youth to fight and kill and maim and bleed and die?…

We sort of had this figured out in the middle ages, with ritual jousting tournaments to settle disputes. Now we have the nukes, leaving most ritual combat to the "lesser" creatures that will replace us:

Storing the radioactive waste in bags along the shoreline is the ideal solution from the standpoint of the Nuclear Village. Off course, they could put everything in a ship and directly dump it into the ocean. But this would make a bad press, if anyone finds out. But there is a clever trick, to let nature do the dirty deed and achieve the same result. They fill everything in bags and lay them out in neat, orderly rows along the coastline. Sooner or later a tsunami will come and wash everything away. The nuclear misfits will, off course, make a very innocent and surprised face and say: "Who could have known, there would be a tsunami coming?"

One more "advantage" is that more radioactivity will be dispersed around the world. This way, in years to come, when health data in Japan are shifting, the difference between the japanese population and any control group will be watered down, literally. Waste gone. Liability gone. "Nobody died from Fukushima." A win-win-win situation for the nuclear mafia. A loose-loose-loose situation for everyone else.
—————————————-
“There isn’t going to be another tsunami.” I imagine, that worker was told this by his supervisor, which again was told by his boss… When authority tells you something, it must be true.

I am surprised they don't pile the bags up as a temporary levee at Daiichi. How's that temporary levee coming anyway? Typical Tepco lies… Nothing has improved in theb10 months since this article below would venture:

"Operators of nuclear power plants across Japan are dawdling in efforts to make their facilities safer, despite government calls nearly a year ago to immediately start work on emergency protective measures.

Most plant operators are nowhere near close to installing coastal levees to protect their nuclear facilities from massive tsunami, nor do they have strategies in place to prevent hydrogen explosions at the plants, an Asahi Shimbun survey shows.

In the aftermath of reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant last March, the government called on all plant operators to swiftly take safety measures against earthquakes and tsunami.

Nearly 12 months on, it is envisaged that only three nuclear facilities will have coastal levees completed by the end of the year.

Not one operator has managed to put measures in place to prevent hydrogen explosions. In fact, many have not even started the work to implement the measures."

LIVE FEEDS

Receive Occasional Enenews Newsletters

sending...

Name

E-mail

SUPPORT ENENews

ENENews receives no funding from anyone or anything, except 1) People who donate via the button below, and 2) Google, who pays for the two ad spots. Thanks to all who have donated or are planning on doing so, it's nice to know people appreciate your work.